Christie’s Sales Surged 53% in 2010 on Contemporary-Art Rebound

By Scott Reyburn -
Jan 27, 2011

Christie’s International said that
the art market had regained strength and stability after its
sales climbed 53 percent in 2010.

Total sales of 3.3 billion pounds ($5.2 billion) were a
sterling record for the 245-year-old London-based auction house,
it said in an e-mailed release. The auction market for
contemporary art bounced back, contributing 602.6 million pounds
to the total -- an increase of 147 percent. The $106.5 million
paid at Christie’s New York for Pablo Picasso’s “Nude, Green
Leaves and Bust” in May was a record for any work of art in a
salesroom. A total of 606 works achieved more than $1 million,
as against 381 in 2009.

“There’s been a big rise in folks collecting and
investing,” Steven Murphy, Christie’s new chief executive
officer, said in an interview. “Traditional clients have been
buying more and we’ve had a lot of new buyers. Demand has grown
in Asia and quite a few masterpieces came on the market.”

Impressionist and modern art continues to be Christie’s’
most lucrative collecting area, contributing 766.6 million
pounds of auction sales, a 53 percent rise. The recovery in the
market for contemporary works came after a year in which prices
declined by as much as 50 percent during the financial crisis.

Roy Lichtenstein’s 1964 painting “Ohhh… Alright…,” which
sold for $42.6 million in New York in November, was the most
expensive work at contemporary auctions that increasingly relied
on established, rather than cutting-edge names.

Discreet Transactions

Private sales contributed 369.3 million pounds in 2010, an
increase of 39 percent. Christie’s said it expects further
growth in these discreet transactions, which represented 11.4
percent of total sales in 2010.

“I don’t see it as cannibalizing the auction market,”
Murphy said. “It provides a service that is essential to our
client relationships.”

Private sales, including those at the London-based Haunch
of Venison gallery, its wholly owned subsidiary, represented
12.5 percent of Christie’s worldwide art business in 2009.

Growing demand from China boosted auction sales of Asian
art and French wine to 569.6 million pounds and 45.8 million
pounds, increases of 115 percent and 70 percent respectively.

China’s mania for Chateau Lafite and other trophy French
labels saw wine become the seventh biggest selling auction
category at Christie’s, above American paintings and Russian
art.

Auctions in Hong Kong rose 114 percent to 465.8 million
pounds, boosted by record prices of HK$129.5 million for a pair
of Qianlong crane censers and HK$180 million for a pink diamond.

Auction Centers

New York was Christie’s biggest auction center with the
equivalent of 1.2 billion pounds of sales, followed by London
with 829.2 million pounds. The U.K. total was dented by a 17
percent decline in auction sales of Old Masters, a category that
has so far failed to attract an influx of new buyers.

Purchases by debut buyers represented 11 percent of total
sales. The U.S. and the U.K. provided 40 percent of new
registrations, with 7 percent from Hong Kong and China.

Christie’s is a private company owned by the French
billionaire Francois Pinault. The auction house was bought by
Pinault’s holding company, Artemis SA, for $1.2 billion in May,
1998. It doesn’t report revenue or profit, though it gives sale
totals twice a year.

Christie’s said its policy, in line with U.K. accounting
standards, is to convert non-U.K. results, using an average exchange rate, weighted daily by sales throughout the year. This
would make the 2010 total of 3.3 billion pounds equate to $5
billion.

Sotheby’s said that it will release its consolidated total
of private and auction sales for 2010 at the end of February or
the beginning of March. Its salesrooms raised $4.3 billion in
2010. In 2007, Sotheby’s consolidated sales totaled $6.2
billion, a record for the New York-based company.

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Muse, the
arts and culture section of Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed
are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story:
Scott Reyburn in London at sreyburn@hotmail.com.